A new video is available at the re-designed SkyOS website, showing the proof-of-concept work on a Media Station application for SkyOS. This proof-of-concept shows the first steps of what will hopefully become a full, specialized application (or possibly complete version) of SkyOS in the not-too-distant future. Additionally, a number of other new features can be seen in this video.

As most people know I'm not much of a fan of SkyOS' business practices and I've often said that IMHO I think they need to either 'put up' (with a downloadable beta so those of us not blessed enough to be on the beta team can see their OS in action before expecting us to spend our hard earned cash) or 'shut up.'

I'm now taking that back! : D

This video was smooth looking and made my mouth water. The fact that Robert says The video is a .swf with low quality. Increasing the quality lead to dramatic frame drops for the embedded video. only increases my admiration. I want in!

--bornagainpenguin

Err...if Kelly Rush reads this, could you advise me as to whether or not I could use a prepaid VISA card to buy a beta? I know from the site that you handle the business matters but am unable to find an email address on site. Paypal is not an option for me (for various reasons, including the fact that it is evil).

Well, there is a lot to fix in regard to drawing the windows. And perhaps there is some thing to polish up in regard to placement of some widgets.

Read earlier today on the SkyOS forum that the windows were a bit different in the right side compared with left side, and that the black dots in the close/maximize-restore/minimize buttons were placed slightly off center. But that are small things to fix up later :p

I have to say the everything seems to run very smooth and the whole projcts looks very promising. Hope they get a wide userbase.I would install it without doubts, i need a system to code/surf/office, two of them are available, the third will be as soon i have time to learn TeX, if its ported.
And they should offer free beta testing for students .

Hello. I am a student (Computer Engineering/A.S in Comp Sci) developer (Mostly C++/Qt/Python). I have been watching SkyOS for quite awhile now. I would be interested in getting my hands on a beta copy of SkyOS.

Please keep the subjective flamebait to yourself. I don't see why people have to compulsively stab at Linux every chance they get.

If you don't think Linux is desktop viable that's your opinion, and in order to keep from turning that opinion into flamebait you're going to have to clearly state that it's your opinion. Otherwise you're presenting it as if it were fact, and that would be the very seed for a flamewar. Show some curteousy for those of us who like Linux.

After all, I don't take cheap shots at other operating systems. I extend the same attitude to people who like other OS's that I expect for myself.

I'm not one of them, I assure you of that. I can understand where you're comming from though, it happens to all of us, the best thing people like us can do is try not to be part of the problem. I don't blame you though.

It's amazing how much more a video does for a GUI than screenshots. It really helps convey the experience in a much better fashion. After reading about SkyOS and looking at screenshots, I've always been like "meh", but this video has sparked my interest.

Maybe more I think it was more, and when the recession hit I lost my bank account due to lack of usage. Because of this I ripped up my bank book and cut my debit card. Guess what? PayPal requires the numbers of my card as a anti-fraud device so I can't even get into my old account to cancel it...

Does anyone know if I can open a new account while the old one exists? Or can you ask Robert if he'll take VISA?

That said allow me to once again congratulate the SkyOS guys on making the OS look good--the only question is whendoes Robert add support for TV cards? And when if he does can he please make closed captions a priority? I'm Deaf (hard of hearing) so having working closed captions would be a big thing for me!

I'm getting more and more impressed with skyos. this video was pretty decent. Great idea, and in my opinion could lead sky os into the realms of XP Media Centre Edition. (which is a good thing)
Linux is always touted as THE windows alternative (on pc platform), but I'm seriously thinking that SKYOS might actually be a better bet (for non geeky programmers I mean)

It's ok, I didn't find it to be as aw-inspiring as others have. What did that video show that was so useful? The search was interesting, especially how it used the meta-data to find it, but I think that is being done in just about every other OS right now, yes? The media center was ok, although I'm not sure being able to play more than one video with a smooth framerate is very useful (except maybe for bragging rights).

BTW, I hate the word 'bloated' in a computer applications context. People who use it don't even use it correctly. Just stop it.

How much of the UNIX filesystem paradigm does SkyOS use? I notice they aren't using drive names, they're using a system apparently rooted at /, like UNIX, but /boot is clearly a different idea altogether, and some (apparently) system files have extensions...

Along the same lines, they've got BASH and GNU binutils; how POSIX-compliant is SkyOS (or how compliant can it be?)

Is there an option to anchor the expanding taskbar?

Am I confused, or is there a sort of media-handling system that globally handles media playback (such that you only have to upgrade, say, the Ogg Vorbis library once and all programs that use the media player will use the new Vorbis codec? Or was that BeOS? Or RiscOS? Or something I just made up?

How much of a performance penalty is incurred with those freeform windows?

The POSIX compatibility in SkyOS is quite good. You should be able to ./configure and make most GNU software. (Bash, GCC, Coreutils,... can all be built without modifing a single line of code).

The filesystem structure used in SkyOS is somewhat different than the one used in *nix OSes. The / directory is completely virtual. /boot holds the partition you booted from. Other top level directories are only mount points or symlinks. Initialy I tried to avoid symlinks at all, but if you want to have a high posix compatibilty or allow easy porting of available software you just have to provide directories like /bin.

All SkyOS system files (drivers, dlls, plugins, services, essential applications, etc. ) are located in /boot/system. All native applications are in /boot/programs. Ported *nix applications are in /boot/programs/unix/bin which symlinks to /bin (respectivly /lib, /usr, /etc). This *nix directories are hidden by default, so the "normal" user only see physical partition in /. (like /boot, /windows, ...).

Hope this explains a few things.

Btw,
>> Anybody see anywhere on their site, or elsewhere mentioning Sky's POSIX compatibility?
Just added 'Is SkyOS POSIX compatible?' to the FAQ section on skyos.org. Thanks for the hint!

>> "it will" == (usually) "never"
Fortunately SkyOS is not such a "usual" operating system

I've been watching SkyOS for about 3 years now and they've sure come a long way. I really hope this project does well, mabye it'll encourage all the Linux geeks to get down and serious about OS ease of use, up to now Linuxers seems to believe ease of use just = pretty visuals. A UI is much more than pretty pictures.

And 30 USD seems pretty good to me, well it's not free, but give the exchange rates at the moment, thats UKP20 or lower, heck even a Linux magazine costs upewards of £6, or about the same to buy a nice printed DVD or CD set through the post.